The earth shivered, then stilled.
Not silence, but the kind after bells, when ears still ring. Across Bharath, garlands trembled without wind. Lamps guttered though no draft touched them. Festival noise carried on, but beneath it ran a thread of pause — a breath the world had not finished taking.
Families in Vaidyanagari muttered it was only a tremor. Along the coast, fishermen swore the tide had pulled too far. In the hills, priests broke chant mid-syllable, unsettled by something their bodies felt before their minds could name.
And by the river, the Prism Tower of the Continental Science Authority lit up like a wound.
The tower burned like a flame under glass, its outer walls alive with living maps of oceans, tectonics, and fault-lines. From festival barges across the water, crowds pointed at the glowing façade as if it were decoration for Sankranti. Inside, no one mistook it for celebration.
The control floor churned with numbers. Analysts hunched over consoles, voices colliding in clipped bursts. Projectors threw anomalies in pulsing bands across the ceiling: sonar shredded by interference, mountainsides blinking red where avalanches slid, coastal waters drawn and released like a hand tugging fabric.
On one panel, the pattern was too neat. Not noise. Not scatter. A rhythm.
A junior analyst's throat tightened. He whispered before he could stop himself.
"The resonance looks… alive."
The room stilled. Fingers hovered above keys.
The Director's reply cracked like a whip.
"We don't use that word. Atypical resonance. Forward it."
Keystrokes resumed, harder than before. But unease had already seeded itself.
The doors opened. Calm footsteps cut across the floor.
Vikram Saran.
He walked with the unhurried pace of someone who expected the room to arrange itself ahead of him. Analysts straightened without meaning to; reports trimmed themselves before reaching him.
"Summaries," he said. "No projections. No poetry."
Order returned. Charts streamed smoother, voices steadied. Vikram read without blinking, cross-checked anomalies, filed approvals. Between reports, his hand spun a coin across his knuckles — metal dulled and uneven, edges worn thin. The faint clicking folded itself into the hum of machines until it seemed inevitable.
One analyst swore later that when the coin spun, his pulse slowed to match it.
Above them, the maps pulsed on. Regular. Relentless. A rhythm that looked uncomfortably like a heartbeat.
The Global Authority gleamed even at midnight: chrome, glass, light so thorough shadows seemed illegal. Officials sat in rising tiers, pale suits reflecting pale walls, their voices soft enough to pretend control.
"Taskforce approved. Recommendations pending," one intoned.
"No anthropomorphic framing," said another. "Not the sea retreated. Say sea level drop."
"And ban heartbeat," added a third quickly. "It invites metaphor."
In the reports, the sea became centimeters. Mountains became slope percentages. What villagers called an omen became a metric.
The numbers soothed no one.
In the stronghold of the Luminists, the hall burned with candles multiplied in mirrored alcoves until every surface glimmered gold. Pillars rose like sermons carved in stone, walls etched with the cross.
Robes whispered as men leaned forward at a long table. They did not ask for reports; they listened to silence as if it had carried them here.
At the head, one voice: flat, final.
"Activate Crow."
The words fell without echo. They did not need one.
Crow was a name only spoken here. It left no reports.
Further south, light ruled cold.
The Crescent Hall of the Qalists gleamed with polished stone so bright no shadow lived upon it. Elders sat in silence, half their faces veiled with embroidered crescents. Their stillness was sharper than speech.
At last, a voice: clipped, metallic.
"Send our own. Quietly."
The others inclined their veiled heads once. That was enough.
Below, steel was readied in silence.
Beyond glass towers, fire halls, and stone crescents, other voices stirred.
In a riverside ashram, elders argued beneath flickering lamps.
"The time has come to act."
"Blood will flow again."
"Floods and quakes — nothing more."
"Or perhaps the first breath of return."
In the hills, priests cut chant mid-syllable and refused to resume, shaken by what their bodies had already heard.
And in a municipal chamber, councilors shouted over sandbag budgets and parade permits, the word alive hanging unspoken but undeniable.
Plural, contradictory, unending. To some, noise. To others, the sound of dharma itself: many, never one.
And in the Prism Tower, the maps still glowed. Anomalies pulsed in neat, merciless rhythm.
Vikram stood unmoving.
"Assign me coordination. If this spreads, we cannot have a conclusion until we investigate it. No point in discussion and assumptions"
The Director hesitated. Then nodded. Authority shifted with the gesture.
The coin spun once between Vikram's fingers, caught light, then stilled. He slipped it into his pocket.
And so, as rooftops tightened reels and wagers, other hands tightened orders.
As boys measured wind and pride, other men measured silence and knives.
The world masked its fear with festivals and reports.
But the hunt had already begun.
And the world, still ringing from its held breath, did not yet know what it was waiting for.